U.S. to begin aiding foreign LGBT groups

The U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal government’s main foreign aid arm, announced at a Monday event in Washington a major new initiative to promote LGBT rights in developing countries.

Eighty-five countries and territories currently criminalize same-sex relationships, according to the agency. Seven impose a death penalty. In South Africa, lesbians are often subjected to “corrective rape,” while throughout the Middle East and Africa, LGBT people are murdered and tortured because of their sexual orientation, said Claire Lucas, a senior adviser at the agency who conceived of the project.

The initiative will work with local LGBT groups to provide leadership training, research and other help, lending the imprimatur of the U.S. government to people who in many countries are outcast and vulnerable. The first work will take place in Equador, Honduras, Guatemala and Colombia. Officials said there has been a spike in violence against transgendered persons in Honduras since a 2009 coup in the country.

Anthony Cotton, an openly gay USAID official working in Africa, said he was just back from a pilot LGBT awareness training program for agency-affiliated workers in Zimbabwe. In response to a question, he came out to the group, heart pounding. “All were at various stages of acceptance, to put it mildly,” Cotton said.

Matthew Emry, a gender adviser in USAID’s Africa Bureau, said in many countries where same-sex relationships are not criminal, violence against LGBT people nonetheless takes place with impunity, by “state and non-state actors.”

The program is an outgrowth of a Dec. 6, 2011 memorandum issued by President Obama that said, “Agencies involved with foreign aid, assistance and development shall enhance their ongoing efforts to ensure regular federal government engagement with governments, citizens, civil society and the private sector in order to build respect for the human rights of LGBT persons.”